Nedan är en del av ett tal av Noam Chomsky: "An American Addiction" från 2001. Handlar främst om "The War and Drugs" och om USAs beteende i Colombia. Citerat från en mp3a så det kanske inte är helt exakt, säkert några engelska stavfel också.
There is a further question kind of lurking in the background, it's never raised but really ought to be, it's not a very profound question, and that is: what right do we have to do anything in Colombia?
Try out new biological weapons, use chemicals in violation of manufacturers, go in with military gun ships, what right do we have to do any of these things? There is a cynical answer to that question, and that is that their government asked us to, but if their government hadn't asked us to they wouldn't be their government, so we can drop that argument.
Puting that aside what right do we have to do it? You could turn the question around, do they have the same right to do it to us? Let's just take say Colombia. Many more people die in Colombia from US lethal drugs than the number of people who die here from Colombian lethal drugs and if you spread it over the whole world its order of magnitude. I mean milions and milions of people in Asia die from US produced lethal substances as do many people here. Im talking about tobacco primarely. The number of deaths from tobacco every year, just in the United States is on the order of 400 000. The total number of deaths from all drugs, what are called drugs, is about 16 000 so it's around 25 times as much. If you look to the rest of the world it's milions and tens of milions of people.
Now notice that those people, they don't have a choice. For example, if Thailand or China or Korea or something, where to try and prevent US lethal substances from going into their country they would be smashed. There is a device called Super 301, a very severe trade sanction will be imposed, in fact they are constantely threatned, if any efort is made to try and prevent the import of US lethal substances. And that's a very severe threat for a country like say Thailand or even China beacause the US market is important. So you can compell countries to accept our lethal substances.
Furthermore they have to accept advertising for them. So if any of these countries try and prevent advertising, mostly directed at vounarable populations like say women and children primarely, if the try and prevent that, again, very severe trade sanctions.
The result of this is that US lethal substances are poured into the countries with massive advertinsing campaigns amed at the most vounarble populations leeding to a huge number of deaths, incalulable number of deaths. One epidemiologist at Oxford university estimated that of the current population of China about 50 milion are gonna die from US lethal substances in the coming years. So it's not small numbers.
So the question then arises, if we have the right to cary out these campaigns in Colombia, why don't they have the right to cary out chemical and biological warfare and military attacks say in North Carolina. Sounds like a simple question. If the US airforce won't let them do it, why shouldn't honest american citizens do it, cause you know they could ask the same question. Well I'll leave that question with you to think about. It's rather striking that it isn't asked, it's not a very profound question. Like it's not a question any junior high school student would have any difficulty understanding. But try to find the question raised somewhere. Notice that there is no debate about the character of US lethal drugs. That's accepted. The US supreme court really recentely determined that tobacco really is the leading public health hazard in the United States. It outhweights a huge number of others combined and they virtually called on Congress to declare them illeagal, they can't really say so but that's what it amounted to.
Andra bloggar om: Noam Chomsky, USA, tobak, lagliga droger
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